Cloning the nose

Woody and Diane telling how they'll do it

I'm off to a slow start writing blog posts in the new year. I've had a few ideas but it's been so busy after my time off for Christmas that I haven't had time to think through my ideas and get them into good enough shape to publish them. It reminds me how far I have to go in improving my writing.It's one thing to come up with ideas but putting them down on paper (or typing them into a computer) is another story.

Well, this post was inspired by a post on one of my favorite blogs, Just Thinking... by Earl Pomerantz. In his post Sitcom Slang, he mentions that there can be short phrases that describe certain situations so that you don't have to spell out the entire story. He says he came up with a few of those himself and that reminded me of the time I did the same thing.

I really enjoyed Woody Allen's movie Sleeper. Woody plays a man who is awakened from cryogenic sleep far into our future where he finds a totalitarian state rules the world. He ends up in a ridiculous situation where he and Diane Keeton are mistaken for surgeons who have been given the task of reforming the assassinated leader of the state from the only thing that survived the assassination - the leader's nose. They are supposed to clone the nose and make an exact copy of the dead leader. So, to stall for time, Woody and Diane give a talk, with a lot of hand waving and jargon filled talk, about how they plan to clone the nose. The picture here is from that scene. They have no idea what they are doing and the task before them is well beyond their (and probably anybody's) ability.

It reminded me of some meetings I had been to or talks I had seen where the presenters had no idea about what they were talking about. They had no idea what they were getting into and probably had no idea how to do what they were talking about. So, whenever I go to a meeting like that, I tell others that the presenters were "Cloning the Nose". Now I don't have to describe the entire meeting. Just that short phrase lets others know everything they need to know about what went on there. With all the time we save, maybe we can really accomplish something.